Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

If the scheme collapses, as is not impossible—the designer’s latest scheme, a cathedral in Accra, now stands as an abandoned empty plot, with the Ghanaian Government looking into the costing—who will be held accountable? It is almost impossible to find out who is actually in charge but, looking at such sources as are available, the boards are heavily populated by politicians and donors, as distinct from experts, and the academic input is seemingly designed to further a political objective. In a time of alleged fiscal responsibility, and if the Government want this project to get off the ground—or rather, under the ground—we need to know who is responsible and where the funding is. Will the Minister please tell us how the Government are going to get a grip?

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene very briefly, as I have in Grand Committee previously, as the Minister and shadow Minister are aware, to make clear my position on this proposal. I am strongly in favour of a Holocaust memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens. I am strongly in favour of a learning centre of good, adequate size that can be of a standard that we would like to see ensured.

All of us sitting here know, as does anyone who has discussed this seriously, that it cannot be done if you try to do it underground in Victoria Tower Gardens. I have great sympathy for the Minister and the shadow Minister because they are both committed; they are obliged to present this. I am sure they believe in it genuinely, but it is the reality that, in the times of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, when it was put to him merely to have the memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens, it was originally proposed that the learning centre would be somewhere else. Then a problem arose over where that somewhere else was, so somebody approached the noble Lord again and he agreed for it to be put into Victoria Tower Gardens, which was not the original proposal.

We understand perfectly well that both the previous and present Governments desperately fear that they might be accused of antisemitism. In the very emotional circumstances that exist at the moment, with all the horrors of Gaza, the two-state solution and the whole Israel situation up in the air—today the Government announced the sanctioning of two senior members of the present Israeli cabinet—this could not be a more emotional and difficult time, and people are very concerned not to be accused of antisemitism. But it is quite clear that the people who will be guilty of antisemitism in the end are those who are proposing this arrangement, because it will never happen.

I have some personal involvement in construction issues in London, and there is no question but that the construction industry has some real problems, including a shortage of skilled people. It is not necessarily going to be the most attractive place to work, with the risk of the sort of demonstrations and other things that will take place. I have not had an answer to the question of whether anybody has yet undertaken to be prepared to quote for this job. If they have agreed to do it, will they in the end be able to honour it, having found some of their employees and skilled men not keen to carry it out?

It is a tragedy, because I think I am right in saying that this has now been going on for nearly nine years. I want to see a memorial and a learning centre. It is my belief that those who have got completely committed and stuck feel it is their duty to stick to where they are and press on. I think it will not happen, and they will then have to bear the responsibility for that. I am not going to get into it, because the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has explained some of these things extremely clearly and well. We know the problems they might run into if they did decide to go ahead with it.

I make one guarantee: if somebody is willing to do it, whatever price is quoted will not be the price at the end. It will keep coming back, and then somebody will get excited about the flood risk and who is going to take responsibility for the people in the learning centre running the risk of drowning if a crowd in there cannot get out. These are all variants on a most unhappy proposal.

I stand firm that we must have a memorial and a learning centre. If we agree not to proceed on this basis, and go ahead independently, it would be possible to do it quite quickly. My understanding is that a number of possible locations for the learning centre are available now, and if we went ahead it would save a lot of public money and mean that it actually happens. I understand the difficulties that the Government Minister and the shadow Minister face, but I believe this very sincerely.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly endorse some of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, about building costs. He has much more experience in the world of construction than I do, but it is a matter that is both of interest to people and very important more generally.

We all know that since Covid there has been huge cost inflation in the building industry, partly because of the difficulty in assessing specialist forms of construction. This project falls into a category where generalised prediction is really not very helpful, for all the kinds of reasons that the noble Lord mentioned about the site and the nature of the processes involved in developing it.

When we think about this—it is a relevant consideration to us all—it is worth our while thinking about some well-known parliamentary projects. I think it was the case that the Scottish Parliament overshot 11 times its original budget. This—I am glad to be able to say—was worse than Portcullis House, which in 2000 was estimated to be £80 million over its original budget. That was only roughly half the overshot per square metre of the Scottish Parliament. We need to be very cognisant of the problems that are faced in the financial aspect of all this.

The Government assure us that they have been advised by experts, although, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, we have not seen any detail about all this, as the Government say that they cannot disclose commercially sensitive information into the public domain. Well, fair enough, but no doubt the Government were advised by similar—if not the same—experts on those other two projects, which seem to have been rather inaccurately valued at the outset.

Frankly, as far as costs go, I can see no reason to have any confidence in the amounts that we hear for this scheme, which, after all—as I think has been mentioned already—have gone up from £50 million in 2015 to £137 million now. Like the noble Lord, Lord King, the only thing that I am confident about is that if this project were to go ahead, that will turn out to be an underestimate.

The reality is that with projects of this kind, it is invariably a matter of “build now, pay up later”. It is not a fiscal rule; it is a rule of experience.